The Cassowary Part 6

And so, amid the laughter of the pa.s.sengers, he was hustled off to a corner and left to his fancies and his struggle. The conversation went on and the sufferer in the corner was almost forgotten save, of course, by the Young Lady. It was a little after the hour's end, when he emerged, exhibiting a rather graceful diffidence. And this is what he read:

THE TOAD FROM THE MINES

I am a toad, Squat and grimy and rough and brown, I come from a queer abode, From down, down, down, Where, for centuries, no light Had fallen on my sight, Until, with sudden shock, Parted the rock, Yielded the stony clamps And blazed in my dim eyes the miners' lamps!

What view is now unfurled!

It is another world From that I left Centuries ago, to which they've brought me Since the black rock was cleft Where thus they caught me.

Centuries ago, one day, I was upon a river bank, at play.

Nature was very fair; I fed on buzzing insects of the air, Beneath tall palms that grew beside the stream In which huge monsters bathed. It did not seem A world like this at all. It was more grand.

The mighty waters washed a teeming land And life was great and fervid. Suddenly Upheaved the land, upheaved the awful sea; The earth was riven; toppling forests bent, To sink and disappear in that vast rent!

Down, down, down.

The landscape plunged from light and life away And now again, to me alone, 'tis day.

How odd it all appears!

Encysted in the rock ten thousand years, I am a stranger here; I cannot praise Those who released me; mine are not your ways.

In this new life I have no enterprise; The sunshine in my eyes But gives me pain.

Put me in some niche of the rock again, It is the only fit abode For me--a prehistoric toad.

There was a buzz of applause as the Poet concluded. Then up rose Colonel Livingston.

"The Toad's experience has made me sentimental and dreamy of mood.

Personally, I'd like to have my savage breast soothed by some music.

Has anybody a piano? No? Well, we can get along without one. Will not some one sing? Who can sing? Mr. Stranger,"--and he addressed himself to a recent and as yet unrecognized addition to the party--"you seem to enter into the spirit of the occasion and to enjoy our fancies indulged here in this, our preposterously direful strait. Will you sing for us?"

[Music:

1. We are the Dreamers of Dreams, We're the creators of fancies; ...

We are whatever it seems, ...

The owners of reason that dances.

We are the Dreamers of Dreams.

2. We tread the paths that are vagrant, And we do the deeds that are flagrant, ...

But ever, without any goad, ...

We find our way back to the road.

We are the Dreamers of Dreams.

3. For we are the Dreamers of Dreams, etc.

And to the amazement of all, the Stranger did not hesitate a moment.

"Certainly," said he. "I believe in fancies." And this is what he sang:

THE DREAMERS OF DREAMS

We are the Dreamers of Dreams; We are the creatures of fancies; We are--whatever it seems,-- The owners of reason that dances, We are the Dreamers of Dreams.

We tread in the paths that are vagrant, And we do the deeds that are flagrant; But ever without any goad, We find our way back to the road.

For we are the Dreamers of Dreams; We are the creatures of fancies; We are--whatever it seems,-- The owners of reason that dances, We are the Dreamers of Dreams.

CHAPTER VIII

ALAN MACGREGOR'S BROWN LEG

One whose presence aided in promoting a healthful mental atmosphere among those so constrained to be together was a lady perhaps thirty years of age who bore herself with the air of a school-teacher, but decidedly with the manner of one whom her pupils would more love than fear. She laughingly alluded to herself as the Teacher and, by common consent, this had become her designation. It was she, most well-informed and reflective of ladies, who, after the applause following the Stranger's song had barely died away, advanced a proposition involving immediately and deeply a tanned, good-looking man who, as was known, had been engaged in the work of collecting rare orchids in South America.

"I have read somewhere," said she, "that people adrift for days at sea, and parched and half-crazed with thirst, either relieve or, possibly, aggravate their sufferings--I do not know how that may be--by all sorts of queer debate as to whether ice-water is good for the health or not, whether iced-claret is better than plain lemonade, in short in a discussion as to the relative merits of all sorts of cooling drinks. And I have read too, that people starving, like some of the Arctic explorers, conduct themselves in almost the same way, imagining all sorts of magnificent repasts, each telling of some meal where his choice among foods was the princ.i.p.al dish or describing what he would first order should he ever reach civilization again.

"Now," she continued, "it seems to me," and she drew her cloak about her more closely and with a shudder, "it seems to me that it would be a great relief and comfort if some one were to tell a story of a tropic region, a place where snow and ice are all unknown. I think we would enjoy it. I know I should myself. Mr. Explorer," and she turned to that gentleman, "you have certainly at some time wandered about in the vicinity of the Equator, cannot you tell us a story, the scene of which is laid in a region where it is always decently warm?" And she shuddered again and cuddled down more closely in her seat.

The Explorer answered readily: "I've been in the vicinity of the Equator a great many times, but I do not remember any experience which would furnish material for a story." He hesitated a moment, "Ah, yes, I do, it's a very curious story, too. I think we may call it

ALAN MACGREGOR'S BROWN LEG

Alan MacGregor was with us in South America. He was with us, but not of us. He had money enough, and had come along just because I wanted him to, and he wanted to see what the tropics were like. We were a semi-scientific group, looking for orchids and caoutchouc and various other things which could be transported down the Amazon and turned into good dollars at any port on the Atlantic coast.

MacGregor was practically an outsider, but was generally regarded as one of us. I think the only possible distinction which existed between him and any other man of the group was, that he was desperately in love with a young Scottish woman of Chicago, of whose intense clannishness and patriotism he was everlastingly boasting and laughing the while. In fact, he became almost something of a bore to us, with his dreaming and his tale-telling of this Miss Agnes Cameron, who, he declared was the most earnest Highlander on the face of the earth. She knew every clan and the coloring of any crisscross of tartan ever worn under snowflake or under sunshine. He was most desperately in love, and what he seemed greatly to admire in his sweetheart was her pure Scottish patriotism.

She thought of, and he quoted, only "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled," or "Up with the bonnets of Bonny Dundee," or any other thing of that sort relating to the exploits of the Highlanders of modernly cla.s.sic times.

Well, MacGregor and I did a good deal of exploring and a good deal of shooting, and enjoyed ourselves together. It is not necessary in this account to mention the exact locality, because, to tell the truth, I could not remember it distinctly myself. We were camped in the corner of a little affluent of the Amazon, some hundreds of miles up from the delta. It was a pleasant enough region, barring the fact that it was frightfully hot and that there seemed to be more jaguars and alligators and anacondas to the square mile than were really necessary. Of course, tastes differ as to the number of jaguars and alligators and anacondas there should be to this mentioned area, but the consensus of opinion in our little party was that, in that lat.i.tude and alt.i.tude, the average had been a little overrun. Not only were they numerous--the animals thus indicated--but they seemed to be, in every instance, healthy and unnecessarily enterprising.

Lots of things happened, but the thing which has always remained best fixed in my memory was the affair of MacGregor's brown leg. We had been out shooting parrots together that very afternoon, and I remember that he drove me nearly mad by his repet.i.tion of how good a Scotchwoman his "la.s.sie" was, and how she boasted of the fact that she was a direct descendant of the reckless old riever, who, herding back into the Highlands stolen cattle from the Lowlands, and stopping for a few hours about midnight to let kine and clansmen rest, suddenly discovered that his son, his eldest son, the pride of clan and family, had so degenerated that, lying barelegged in the snow, he had rolled up a s...o...b..ll for a pillow, and was there sleeping most luxuriously when his father found him. The old laird promptly kicked that s...o...b..ll into the ewigkeit, and wanted to know how far his family had become degenerate and degraded! Well, Miss Agnes Cameron boasted of this old laird as her great, great, and so on, ancestor. This will give some idea of the extent of her native pride in bare legs and Scottish blood.

It was, perhaps, four o'clock one afternoon when we were in camp in an open glade in the very midst of the forest, that the whole company scattered itself of its own impulse. I wanted to study the habits of a small animal, a specimen of which I had seen among some rocks a mile away--a sort of little armadillo. My scientific a.s.sociate wanted to try for a jaguar, the growls of which our attendants had heard in the forest, a mile or so in the other direction. The natives whom we had employed as guides and servants were themselves anxious to engage in a little expedition of their own. They had seen a fruit of which they are fond--they are always gorging when they have opportunity, these almost savage natives--and they wanted to go out and gather a great quant.i.ty of it while the opportunity offered. Alan alone remained inactive. He had worked hard the day before, had done a lot of shooting, and had need of rest, and now, as he declared, he wanted to slip away and sleep all the afternoon. Sometimes Alan drank a little. I believe he had a flask with him that day. At any rate, we all departed and left him lying stretched out upon the ground beneath a giant tree, which kept him shaded as if beneath an umbrella, fifty feet, at least, in its diameter.

That is all there was to the situation. We drifted away into the forest in our several directions, and left Alan lying there sleeping like a lump, for, poor fellow, he needed rest. "It would take a good deal to disturb that man," laughed one of the party as we departed. Now, as to what followed, I can tell you only of what I did not see, but what, as was made apparent later, was the absolute fact.

We were camped close beside a great creek which reached the affluent of the Amazon, and along these creeks, as along the river proper, were gigantic serpents. The anaconda is as much at home on land as in water.

Those big constrictors of the southern part of this great hemisphere are dreadful. They prey upon the deer and upon a thousand other things. They are a terror everywhere, and, though we did not know it at the time, there was concealed in that tree beneath which poor Alan was lying, a very healthy specimen of this powerful reptile. That was what we concluded afterward, although the great snake may not have been there when we left, and may have come afterward. Anyway, what happened must have been just this: The great serpent saw the sleeping man, and looked upon him as his prey. He saw what was his food breathing stertorously, and he dropped from the tree or came up from the river beside him. He began to swallow the man.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE GREAT SNAKE BEGAN ITS WORK OF DEGLUt.i.tION"]

It was unfortunate for this particular anaconda that the reptilia are not great reasoners. He should have begun upon the man's head. Then it would have been a simple thing. The man would have been engulfed, the serpent would have crawled sluggishly a hundred yards or so away and begun his period of digestion, and that would have been the end of the incident. Instead of that, he started on a foot, and began swallowing from that point. Now, it is a well-known fact that this swallowing of a body by any of the constrictor family, except as to contraction and eventual suffocation, is harmless, because the jaws of this cla.s.s of serpents are unconnected. The upper jaw slips forward, hooks onto the body with its fangs and draws it into an enormously distended throat.

Then the under jaw slips forward in the same manner, hooks its fangs, and draws it back in the same way. So, inch by inch, a body is engulfed. Anything with a nonsensitive exterior can be swallowed by an anaconda, a boa, or a python without knowing about it until a lack of air becomes apparent.

MacGregor wore a pair of very heavy leather trousers he had secured to guard him against the undergrowth with which we had to worry. So the great snake began his work of deglut.i.tion, and Alan lay there, unconscious of what was going on. Still that snake swallowed Alan as fast as he could. He swallowed him as far up as the leg went and then stopped, from the simple fact that the rest of Alan lay at right angles across his mouth, and he could not swallow any further. But a snake does not reason much, and this particular anaconda lay there contented, perhaps in his dim way knowing that he had got something good as far as it went, and that he was satisfied. And the process of digestion went on.

It was truly a coincidence that we all returned almost together that evening. It must have been about seven o'clock. Malcolm came back from his particular quest without a jaguar. I had failed to find my little animal. The natives had found their fruit, and had gathered a large load, or they would have been in long before us. Then we looked for Alan. To describe the scene that ensued when our poor friend was discovered would be impossible. He was sleeping like a log. We thought him dead, at first, but some one gave him a spat upon the face and shouted, and he leaped, or tried to leap, to his feet, and when he saw what was the matter, he gave one of the most blood-curdling yells ever emitted upon either the North or the South American continent. The snake began thrashing around, but was already in a semi-lethargic condition, and was promptly chopped in two a little below the point where the foot of our poor friend was supposed to be. Then the remainder of the serpent was cut away with much difficulty from the leg which it had enveloped, and a shocking spectacle was presented.

It is understood, generally, that the digestive organs of the anaconda are something most remarkable. Here was an ill.u.s.tration in fact. Not only the leather trousers of our unfortunate friend had been digested away, but the digesting process had reached his skin and destroyed it utterly. The bare flesh was all exposed and the skin had followed the trousers. Alan was unable to stand, and was so overcome with horror at his condition, as to be incapable of suggesting anything for relief from his immediate predicament or for his future restoration. The raw flesh attracted a myriad of insects, who added all their tantalizing possibilities to the situation. Alan could not bear contact with any sort of covering, and none of us was provided with oiled silk or anything suitable for such an unheard-of emergency. I did not know what to do. I called upon Dr. Jacobson, the eminent scientist of the expedition. Hardly had I asked his advice, before there came the whirr and swish of arrows, and we were in a charming fight in no time. The event, in fact, became almost too interesting, but we managed to drive off the natives and found half a dozen of them, dead or dying in the underbrush. They had carried off most of their wounded.

To Jacobson came an inspiration, as he was looking curiously at one of the dead natives. He broke out excitedly:

"There's an insensible, dying Indian just about the size of MacGregor.

If we work quickly enough, we can do the biggest job of skin grafting ever heard of upon this or any other continent, or anywhere in stellar s.p.a.ce as far as you have a mind to go."